Another self-portrait. Here is my shadow wantonly tromping over the endangered sagebrush ecosystem. The ecologists in my department are very into sagebrush and I've sat through several seminars on sagebrush, sage grouse, fritilliary butterflies that live in sagebrush, etc. (No, I don't know what fritilliary butterflies are, nor how to spell them. I've been too ashamed to ask.)

All kidding aside, I've learned a lot about a neglected and underappreciated ecosystem. It's easy to get people psyched up to save the rain forest, but sagebrush is a harder sell. It's scruffy, it's brown most of the year, and it doesn't exactly have the most spectacular biodensity on the planet. To the casual observer it seems pretty dull and empty. But if you start hanging out in it you begin to notice little bits of exquisite beauty: unexpected flowers, flocks of birds, perky little chipmunky things, and, yes, the butterflies. Alas, it is generally regarded as a far better use to let cattle eat it than to let the flowers, birds, butterflies and chipmunky things live in it, so vast tracts of federal sagebrush are leased to ranchers. And after the cattle are done eating it, cheatgrass grows in its place which the cattle can't eat and the birds can't hide in. Somehow this all makes sense, but this was 1hr 35min into the seminar late on Friday afternoon so I missed that part.

Anyway, here's more sagebrush for 'ya. Enjoy it while it lasts.

This is path back to town - I wasn't actually standing in sagebrush. The palisades on the far right are all the way across the basin. I saw a herd of deer this morning but had some camera issue. There's no way you'd believe that the blob in the picture is actually a deer. This is one of the downsides of hiking in the morning - the light is fantastic one way and totally lousy the other.



Even the high mountains don't have much snow yet.




And we have trees, too! Or at least one.